


Near and Dear

by hayden



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bondage, Erotic, Lycanthropes, M/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-18 19:43:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2359961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hayden/pseuds/hayden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Explicit rating for later chapters.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Near and Dear

**Author's Note:**

> Explicit rating for later chapters.

Elijah could tell that this was to be the homecoming that he had feared: the homecoming that would want to make him stay. He was small next to the others, a diminutive five-three to their average six-two, and where they had muscle and sinew to boast strong frames he had an overactive metabolism and inability to keep any gained weight. High calorie drinks and snacks had become a regular addition to his meals since puberty but it had done little more than give him an ass worth the looks that his father mourned seeing his son earn in passing. It was not easy being the son of the alpha in a pack like Hightower Falls; there were certain expectations, responsibilities, shoes to fill since day one out of the womb as a wee cub. As far as Elijah was aware he had been a disappointment every turn until the day he had declared that he would be leaving. 

Since he had gone to stake out a living of his own away from the pack, it was only for the odd special occasion that he would return to remind them how different he was and why it was better that he had gone. He did his best not to look for the disappointment in their faces when they saw how little had changed in his time away, tried not to hear the relief in their voices when he told them it was time for him to go again. In return they did not force the issue of finding a mate and staying for good, whelping sons who would take after their grandfather rather than Elijah with any luck. 

Yet as his boots crunched into the snow as he plodded his way from his Range Rover to the door of the large cabin, he could sense that something had changed and that these plans would need to be accelerated. There would be no more waiting for Elijah to blossom and father sons and daughters for the pack. He could smell sickness on the air before he knocked and his gut twisted painfully within, a terrible knowledge already formed reluctantly in the back of his mind. It was his father's beta Samuel that opened the door and not his mother, and that only served to deepen the sense of dread attempting to encompass him at the stoop.

"Where?" Elijah needn't ask more than that. He was directed silently by a pointing finger towards the stairs at the end of the main room and as he walked, he worked to stifle the growing panic expanding in his chest. Expertly avoiding the boards and steps he knew as a child to creak under the lightest step he made his way to the last room at the end of the hall, with anticipation gnawing at his insides and threatening a spell of nausea.

His parents room. Fond and harsh memories alike flooded his mind as he approached the door with trepidation, almost- no, certainly fearing what he would find inside. When his palm only grazed the warm wood he heard his mother calling to bring him in, the soft and often melodic quality of her voice now a cracking, sad thing that trembled to speak his name. He knew at once what was going on, why he had been summoned early for the holiday visit. The letter itself hadn't seemed strange as it was not the first time that he had received one over a friendly phone call, but as he turned the knob, he thought back to the wording, the lack of the usual cheer in it and he shivered. 

The first thing that greeted him when he entered were the open arms of his uncle Daryl, a tall and thick man with a mat of hair that peeked out from his chest above the deep v of his tank top and which Elijah knew was only repeated in mats across his arms and legs as he had once attributed them as a child to something he aspired to have. Truth be told, that much body hair on a man like Daryl looked good, but so much on himself would have been...unnatural to say say the very least. He wrapped his rail thin arms as far around the man as he could manage and his face was buried against his hard chest, near smothering him. Before he could so much as rasp for his next breath however, Daryl was being called away with a deep rumble of laughter and a half-baked attempt at a chide. 

"Don't suffocate the boy for Lunas sake, Dee..."

Elijah's heart swelled, instantly recognizing the voice and smiling as he was released. That smile was too soon a challenge to keep. As he was gently turned away from his uncle and steered around towards the bed, the weight of the scene sunk in. It was as though the tiny stones in his stomach had suddenly melded and formed into a great boulder, and once urging him to take heavily to his knees and tearing him open from from the inside out with its enormous weight. His father lay in bed, his mother looking so small where she sat in a chair at his side, their hands held with fingers twined even though his own looked so ashen against her honey-coloured skin. At one point he had looked to favour his father: small, it was true, but bearing his father's kind brown eyes and the swell of his thick lips, the glow of his freckled skin. Then the traits of his mother had overwhelmed him as he reached his first year. He bore her red hair, her soft and small hands, her jawline as delicate as it looked, her grace: almost feline, every every move fluid. 

As a child nothing seemed more natural than the pair of them side by side, their contrast appealing somehow, like puzzle pieces that had slid perfectly into place to complete a picture of perfection. Not anymore. There was some dissonance in their differences. Something alien and weird and wrong. 

With nothing between them- not three thousand miles, not the cold winter air, not the thick wood of a door, Elijah at once knew what the source of that sickly smell was. He could pick it out on the space between them, smell it on on his father's breath when he spoke to him now that Daryl's scent was not right under his nose. Suddenly, the sweater and snow pants he wore were not thick enough. He was chilled down to the bone. 

It was cancer. It was sweet and pungent all at once, like a rotting fruit as it fermented, only this time it was his father expiring. The smell was so strong he knew that the chances of fighting it were long gone; no amount of medicine would would wipe it away. It was everywhere. Meeting his mother's eyes only confirmed that, and as her smile came it broke his heart to know that he was right in thinking now that he had been summoned back not for their usual Christmas hunt, but to say his final goodbye. 

With that knowledge came several other thoughts and awareness was a brick wall that he did not hit but was entirely crushed by. There was a hitched gasp and rough sob, and it took him too long to realize that he had been the source of that sound. 

"How long?" he asked and did not know if if he meant to know how long they they had known that he was sick, or how long his father had left with them. The look of guilt on his mother's face and anger in Daryl's said enough. He felt angry himself when he realized, and it must have shown on his face because his father pulled himself up with shaking arms. Seeing the great alpha Lindon so weak made him feel nauseous. 

"I didn't want you to give up on your dreams and come back here. I asked them not to tell you."

"I should have been here from day one when you realized. Were you going to make them wait until you died before they could tell me? ...Your own son?" 

“Eli, please.” The sound of his mother’s pleading voice was too much, He felt bile rise in his throat and he turned, shuddering as his mind returned to darker days. Dee could not have hoped to stop him, forced to bend knee when Elijah turned on him: a wealth of energy rolling off of him, the blood of his father too strong in him even if his uncle was double his size. He was beneath him by rank, by blood. He knelt, hard, kneecap clapping on the wooden floor without a single word needing be said; the look, the feeling passed on, was enough. 

“I need a drink.” he said, voice rough, and spun back toward the open door. When his feet left stairs and crunched snow he did not know, but the last thing he would clearly recall was Samuel calling his name long after the front door had been slammed shut behind him; a voice asking him not to go. 

It was storming when Elijah woke. 

Still hugging the bottle he had emptied the night prior, he was thankful that his ability to heal so quickly meant that he was not owed time to a nurse a migraine. At first he wasn't sure what had woken him and then it came to him: a soft, simpering noise almost like a giggle nearly muffled by the end. Not enough. The shush in that followed came at a deeper register, a grown man's voice that didn't bring an immediate name or face to mind. It was completely foreign and on instinct he turned an ear towards the sound, willing himself still and calming his heart rate; controlling his breaths until peace settled in. There was no need to strain. With his breath and heartbeat subdued there there was there was no need. He could hear this man clearly though he now whispered, gingerly turning away the much younger, giggling owner of the first voice. 

He slowly sat, moving as carefully as a cat on a barbed fence, gracefully moving from directing himself around the bed on his fingertips and knees to approaching the high window of his room on tiptoe. He crouched, listening close, hoping for a name, a rank, anything to give him some clue as to who the new guy was. Strangers were not exactly welcomed with open arms into Hightower Falls and Elijah couldn't scent him from there. Not without cracking the window open and reaching his senses out. If the guy was a wolf he would know what was happening and Elijah would be found out. Why it meant so so much to him that he was not, Elijah did not know, but it drove his actions and that was good enough for him; the best things a wolf had were his instincts. 

When he did stand at last it was with slow deliberation, the final effort to keep his snooping under wraps as he raised his head above the sill and looked out towards the flurry slowly fading outside. What he found were two sharp, green eyes locked on him in the window, a slow smile twisting just beneath before a customary bow of the head would obscure his handsome face from Elijah's view. 

With his heart thundering, there was nothing quiet about the way that he dropped immediately to the floor- back out of sight, with no more of an answer to look to than he had initially had when he'd sat up in bed.

He had to face the music eventually, and... Luna help him, but honestly, he needed to put a name to the face of the man outside. He hadn't even bothered looking for the kid; one of the late summer pups no doubt, probably soon graduating and learning what her role would be as her personality was formed and determined where in the ranks she fell. It wasn't as easy as they made it seem in the books or the movies and he recalled that age with a deep sigh. He'd always cringed when they broke their packs so crudely down: fiction or not it was an insult to their system - and speaking of… The very distinct hierarchy left his parents on top and even if it was more than strength to thank for it (and thank Luna for that, he cringed), that left Elijah directly beneath them, and the betas under him. While he hardly felt up to the task of seeing his father again so soon, he knew that he could at least talk to Samuel to get some more answers. Now that the proverbial cat was out of the bag, why wouldn’t the man talk? 

Shaking hands passed through copper locks and tucked the kinks tight until it pulled straight, and suddenly the stinging in his scalp dissipated along with the tension that had been building into a headache. Anxiety could be a bitch. Fresh clothing waited in his bag, brought in from the Range Rover on his second trip to the liquor cabinet that night, and he knew he could find a comb in the connected bathroom. He would get dressed, make himself presentable, and head downstairs. That was the plan and all he needed was to work up the nerve. 

Time to face the music…


End file.
